Data communication systems exchange user data to provide various services like media streaming, audio/video conferencing, data messaging, and internet access. The data communication systems use several communication protocols to transfer the user data. Exemplary communication protocols include Long Term Evolution (LTE), IEEE 802.3 (Ethernet), IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi), and Internet Protocol (IP). Within a given communication protocol, there may be multiple underlying communication protocols. For example, an LTE data packet using the LTE protocol uses underlying protocols like Media Access Control (MAC), Radio Link Control (RLC), and Packet Data Convergence Protocol (PDCP).
To improve efficiency, data communication systems perform data compression on user data. The data compression process removes redundant and unnecessary aspects of the user data and a reciprocal decompression process rebuilds the original data. Some forms of data compression transfer only changes to a data set instead of repeatedly transferring the complete and modified data set. For example, video compression technologies often transfer a complete image and then transfer modifications to the image instead of transferring the complete modified image. In another example, voice compressors drop silence data (white noise) and the voice decompressor automatically regenerates white noise at the receiver.
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) is a popular communication network used to transfer data and signaling between wireless communication devices and base stations. In OFDM communication systems, reference signals are used to estimate channel quality. Reference signals may use pre-defined symbols known by both a wireless communication transmitter and a wireless communication receiver. Downlink reference signals are reference signals from a base station to a wireless communication device and may include Cell-specific Reference Signals (CRS), Channel State Information Reference Signals (CSI-RS), Demodulation Reference Signals (DM-RS), Multimedia-Broadcast Single-Frequency Network Reference Signals (MBSFN-RS), or Positioning Reference Signals (PRS). Uplink reference signals are reference signals from a wireless communication device to a base station and may include a Sounding Reference Signal (SRS) or a DM-RS.
Unfortunately, current use of reference signals results in more overhead on the air interface resource which increases overhead and significantly impacts overall network capacity and throughput. Therefore, reference signal technologies have not been properly optimized for data transmission efficiency.